Forming alliances between local initiatives to strengthen social and political agency
Since moving from its previous site Quartel de Santa Bárbara to the former Miguel Bombarda Psychiatric Hospital in the summer of 2024, the project Jardins do Bombarda has been operating in a fragile partnership with a state-owned real estate company. Although there are plans to create social housing on the site, the building permit for alterations to the historically protected structures has yet to be granted. For now, activists are using the site for social and cultural projects that operate within a legally precarious framework, as the property could be sold at any time. The cooperative Largo Residências, which manages the project, intends to secure the project’s future by negotiating with the authorities, proposing a model of urban planning that sustainably integrates social, cultural, and inclusive processes. The question is how the achievements made to date can be secured in the long term, and how legal frameworks can be used to strengthen socially engaged spatial practices through public-community partnerships.
